


You're the Dragon They're Chasing

by Eristastic



Category: End Roll (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 13:23:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8104069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eristastic/pseuds/Eristastic
Summary: “I think you need to talk to them,” the Informant says, because he’s an idiot who seems to think Russell needs and will take his advice. He’s wrong on both counts.  
Russell's extremely protective, and the Informant calls him out on it. No one like your doppelganger to give you a pseudo-therapeutic guilt-trip.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently I still have things to say about Russell. I think I'll calm down a bit with the constant posting now, though.

“That’s a strange kind of disconnect you’ve got going on there,” the Informant says, not quite kindly. He isn’t often kind. It’s difficult to say what he is. A mirror perhaps, stained with everything Happy Dream wants from Russell.

Russell himself isn’t interested in ramblings about his own shortcomings. It’s tiring, and it’s infuriating: does the Informant really think he doesn’t know? That he doesn’t think about them every second of every day? But he learnt from a young age that it’s better to keep his mouth shut, so he does. That’s another one of his shortcomings.

“I mean…” the Informant starts, before trailing off and staring into space for a moment. He tries again: “You’re a little bit of a hypocrite. Just a tiny bit. A smidgen. I didn’t really realise until just recently, but you’re surprisingly protective of everyone, aren’t you?”

He is.

 

_Fighting the Witnessing One was a lesson in humiliation. Just him and Tabasa, and he wasn’t anywhere near strong enough back then. He was an idiot; he thought it was going to be okay if he just kept hitting, smashing, braining a path through the monsters that made the mistake of getting in his way._

_He didn’t count on a stray hit taking Tabasa out._

_For a moment, everything went still, and then there was shrill laughter to slice up the silence. Russell stared up at the monkey-shaped_ thing _, his hands curling around his wooden stick._

_He felt anger boiling him, shuddering through his very bones._

_But he was too weak to do more than win. That wasn’t enough._

 

“The way you fight is something of a revelation, you know,” the Informant says casually, picking lint off his sleeve. He leans against the counter, a portrait of self-satisfied insouciance. “I didn’t know children could fight the way you do, but then, I don’t think you knew either. Before you came here, it was all ‘nothing will change, even if I try’, right? Looks like you’ve learnt something.”

Russell doesn’t look at him, but he doesn’t leave either.

 

_The Lamenting One was different. He’d fought and fought, draining the spotless dungeon dry of what monsters it could spit out at him. It still wasn’t enough, but it was a start, and no one fainted. Not until that oversized monstrosity of rancid cream and not-quite-strawberries._

_There was something almost funny about it, or there would have been, if he hadn’t been so struck by the memories. They warped everything he saw. Gardenia was right by him, giving it all she had with her frying pan, and then a different – similar – face was twisted in fear, growing further and further away. Falling down stairs._

_He stumbled and was hit across the face for his trouble, slammed into the wall opposite. It didn’t matter. He had to win. He didn’t want to see that again._

_But Tabasa shouted in worry, and Gardenia – brave, upstanding Gardenia – lashed out at the monsters. They targeted her. By the time Russell had got back up, she was unconscious on the ground._

_Something choked him – was it failure? No: he’d felt that before. This, he’d felt before too, but it wasn’t…it was… He swallowed._

_He never wanted to see her laid out like that, blood on her temple. Never again._

 

The Informant looks at him meaningfully, but Russell doesn’t know what he’s trying to say: he has to put it into words. “Your friends worry about you – did you know? They come and talk to me sometimes. Wondering if I’ll be able to, ah, _inform_ them. I don’t know what to say, which isn’t a position I like to be in, Russell.”

Russell shrugs. It’s not his problem.

 

_By the time he got to the Burying One, he’d learnt. He’d fought more, bought more items, trained up his helpers, such as they were. He had a long way to go, but he was here, and he wasn’t going to fail again._

_Things didn’t go the way he’d expected._

_The flashbacks came again, of course they did, but he was ready for them and he ignored them with the same ferocity he swung his bat into the woman’s fragile body. He was used to memories attacking him. Dogma and Cody weren’t._

_It wasn’t so much their distraction that bothered him: he could have taken all three monsters by himself and beaten them into a pulp, and gladly. It was the siblings’ fear, their doubt, their grief. It was their horror as they struggled to fight this woman, so like their mother. It was their distress as the Burying One’s taunts tried to remind them of something they weren’t allowed to remember._

_Fire. Searing, scalding heat on their skin. Russell knew they could still feel it burning them, and he couldn’t do anything._

 

“I think you need to talk to them,” the Informant says, because he’s an idiot who seems to think Russell needs and will take his advice. He’s wrong on both counts.

“I’m not supposed to,” Russell says, looking out of the window. It’s sunny, but that’s just a bright veil over something much more sinister: you can smell the monster in the air. It’s like stale beer.

“Why not?”

“I’m not supposed to tell them this is a dream.”

“What? No, that’s not… I didn’t mean talk about that. I mean…open up to them a bit. Show them you trust them. Wouldn’t you feel better if you did?”

He would, he knows he would, but the Informant’s wearing his smug smile, and Russell knows better than to trust it. There are smiles you can trust – Tabasa’s, Gardenia’s, Kantera’s, everyone’s – but the Informant’s isn’t one of those.

“You _would_ feel better, Russell,” the Informant says, walking over to stand next to him by the window. “Maybe then the memories wouldn’t hurt so much.”

 

_The Aged One was easy. It was what came before that that made Russell’s shrivelled heart sink and squeeze between immoveable walls of dread. It was the knife, then the blood, then the solid, sure memory that laid its hand on his shoulder and told him gently that this was what he was good for._

_Killing Kantera. Hurting people._

 

Russell shrugs away from the kindly hand the Informant tries to pat him with.

“It’s called repentance, Russell.”

“I _am_ repenting.”

“Is that what you think?”

 

_And then there was the Jealous One, and he thought it was over. It was easy, so easy, and he thought it was just because he was strong enough to protect everyone now._

_He wasn’t, but he was strong enough to push an unresisting woman off a roof._

 

He doesn’t answer: how are you supposed to answer that? It’s just the Informant trying to revel in his own cleverness again. That’s all it is.

But he’s frowning, and the Informant doesn’t frown, almost as a rule. “You really think that, don’t you, Russell? You think you’re repenting by trying to protect them this time. You think that’ll make everything better, if you can keep them alive. That’s not how this works.”

The sickening smell of beer and sweat clogging his nose, Russell waits to be told how it works.

The Informant spreads his arms, a little despairingly. “You’re supposed to face what you’ve done! You’re supposed to look it in the eyes and understand the pain you’ve caused, not try and protect people from _you_. That’s all you’re doing, Russell. You’re trying to keep them safe, as if that’ll make things better, but you’ve already killed them. You’re the monster you’re chasing. It’s always been you.”

He scowls.

“You’ve already killed them,” the Informant repeats, because apparently once wasn’t enough. “It’s no good working yourself to the bone to save them now if you’re not going to at least try and accept that these people – the ones who love you – are people you killed in cold blood.”

‘ _Don’t you think I know that?!_ ’ he wants to scream, but Russell doesn’t scream. He’s left with slamming the door and stalking out into the peace of dusk in a village populated by walking corpses. Corpses who talk to him, fight with him, laugh and chat and love, and all he’s trying to do is let them keep doing that for as long as possible.

It’s pointless sentimentality, but he can’t help himself anymore.


End file.
